Product strategy and design

As opposed to the recent past, when products usually competed on the basis of functionality and performance, today competition between most categories of products on the market is mainly focused on user experience and the soft attributes of the product, with good engineering taken for granted. Consequently, in this day and age product designers are professionals trusted to manage product development in the company – technology and engineering now serve design and user experience, and not the opposite. We live in an era in which design (in leading companies) is not merely a tool for developing products, but also a tool for generating innovation and formulating (product) strategy. Much as branding developed from the world of graphic design, so product strategy developed from product design, led by professionals who are experts in the interaction between product users and user experience.

Product Strategy is an exciting field that combines innovation and design with marketing and business strategy. With the turning of the millennium, competition in the marketplace ceased to focus on mere functionality and shifted its attention to design and user experience. The role of design expanded from being a product development performance tool to one used by marketing and management for research, product definition, and innovation. The design world turned from product design to strategic design.

In the early 2000s, industry first began adopting Product Strategy (or strategic design) in formulating business strategy. It has since taken its place as a central factor in the business activities of leading American and European companies. It is based on the perception that in the modern world, innovation and design should be an integral part of a company’s business strategy. Design both impacts and is impacted by marketing and business strategy. If in the past the role of the product designer was mainly performance-based as part of an R&D department, today the designer is part of the visionary team that studies, innovates, defines, and writes the product characterization that serves as the basis for the design and development process

A company that aspires to lead the market and develop innovative products that are superior to those of the competition cannot remain dependant on product design as a performance tool; design must be an integral part of its worldview and overall strategy.

Product Strategy is no longer limited to consumer products. Businesses have discovered that if they take strategic factors into consideration when designing products for internal use, they get a more effective product that does the job better.